


Inertia

by jennifercharter



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Claire doesn't exactly believe him, Right?, Sylar tries to be good, This is not exactly a happy story, but there is always hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 18:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3540326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jennifercharter/pseuds/jennifercharter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-BNW. Claire tries not to notice Sylar has changed. Sylaire, but barely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inertia

**Author's Note:**

> I'm adding all of my fanfiction.net stories to AO3, so please remember some of these are god-awful old, and probably dated.  
> Does anyone still read this fandom? :)  
> Let me know if you enjoy my offering!
> 
> Insert generic "please don't sue me over copyright because I own nothing" line.

The first time Sylar offered to make Claire coffee, she threatened to kill him, permanently, with the coffee pot.

It took a long time for Claire to accept that Sylar was no longer who she sometimes referred to as her Sylar.

Her Sylar was a monster, a killer without remorse. Her Sylar gave her nightmares. This Sylar… he was different.

Peter sang his praises, and even Claire could see he wasn't the same.

Still, it was hard to look at him and reconcile that the man that had spent a good portion of her teenage years torturing her and haunting her nightmares had now become a hero.

He was too.

A hero.

She’d been around for him to protect her and lots of other specials during the fiasco that followed her decision to leap off the Ferris wheel.

The hardest part was the way his eyes lingered on her whenever they all managed to sit down together, although she’d done her best to ignore him.

He brought her coffee in the mornings before the classes he escorted her to, and she always accused him of trying to poison her. She always drank it anyway, once he was out of sight.

He told her once, at Peter’s during her birthday party, that if given enough time, he might grow on her. She retorted that he had always reminded her of a fungus. He sent her a basket of a dozen mushrooms the next morning.

She couldn't help but laugh and that was a terrifying moment in her head.

She still charged into battle, not caring for her own safety, and he became the one saving her, instead of the usual.

Some specials kidnapped her, drugged her, and she woke to electric fury, and her once nightmare became a dream before her eyes. Her voice barely stopped him from killing, and she realized, maybe for the first time, that he hadn't killed anyone, good or bad, in a very long time.

“Not for me,” she told him softly as he held her kidnappers over the abyss of what he had been. He dropped them, leaving them to the rest of the rescue team, and effortlessly scooped her into his arms.

“Only for you,” he whispered into her hair.

While she was recovering Peter told her a story about a future he’d experienced, where she was the bad guy, and Sylar was a stay at home dad. A stay at home dad in her old house, with a son named Noah. There were suggestions, and implications, there that she didn't even want to think about. It might be a coincidence. She joked it sounded like the Twilight Zone.

Despite her so-called humor, she reminded herself often that it was a future no longer in motion, stopped before it could all go wrong.

Sylar would check on her, and he worried out loud about how quiet she was. She told him she missed the good old days when they just tried to kill each other.

He didn’t speak to her for weeks.

She got a new escort to class.

No coffee, no morning bickering about poison, and she missed it.

God, she was weird.

They studied inertia in her physics class, and her teacher used a lot of metaphors to help them understand. Claire worked it out in her head using some unconventional examples.

Sylar would keep moving at the same velocity, and only she could change that.

She sent him a small model bridge from a train set (hoping he’d get it), with a note that simply said “I’m working on it.”

He left her a voicemail during class (of course he knew she wouldn’t answer). “I have time.”

He started bringing her coffee again in the mornings, and she started telling him thank you.

It was a start.


End file.
